WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS CENSORSHIP
“In the regions, those who do not buy [satellite] dishes watch Channel One and Russia-1, so [old comedy show] “Anshlag” still exists — there is nothing to watch, they eat what they are given.” — The Insider — How information and political wars unfold on Russian federal television
In the Press Freedom Rating, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders, Russia has been ranked 148 over the last two years. In Europe, the only Belarus has a lower position. RWB also notes that TV channels continue to broadcast “state-run propaganda” and journalists who question such a point of view are subjected to moral and physical pressure and censored.
Despite the article 3 “Inadmissibility of censorship” of the law “On Mass Media”, censorship continues to grow, especially on TV. According to research on the relationship between mass media and the state, the authorities frequently influence television channels in either direct or indirect ways, from buying out company shares to direct bullying of media owners.
The mute conviction
On Russian television, all channels (both federal and private) are subject to the same laws restricting content that they can broadcast (such as the law “On Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development”). However, journalists and TV reporters cite political censorship as the main limiting factor, despite the fact censorship is ostensibly prohibited (except during official states of emergency and martial law). Violation of the anti-censorship law entails criminal, administrative or disciplinary liability.
Despite the laws, political censorship continues to exist on federal television and becomes a routine part of journalists’ work on federal channels. As far back as 2012, famous journalist and television critic Irina Petrovskaya, in an interview with Deutsche Welle, noted that this censorship begins, first of all, with the journalists’ self-censorship. In believing that their articles or reports will not pass the censorship of the channel, Petrovskaya argues, they preemptively make their writing tame. The Press Secretary for the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov denied the existence of the political censorship, but stated that if the state gives money for the setting or any other project, it has the right to impose restrictions on a particular topic.
In 2011, the well-known TV journalist and host of an author’s program on the country’s top channel (Channel One Russia), Vladimir Pozner, said that his program has an individual stop-list (a list of people who cannot be invited on air) that does not coincide with the stop-list of the channel. In doing so, he became the first prominent figure on Russian television to publicly acknowledge the existence of stop-lists on federal television channels at all. Until then, their existence had not been confirmed by insiders. In a recent interview on YouTube channel “Vdud”, Pozner said that no one “could forbid or allow him to invite people for interviews, but can only advise [whom he should or should not invite]”. In 2015, he noted that journalism as a profession does not exist in Russia — only individual journalists who adhere to professional and ethical codes.
If you ask any Russian over 18 years old which TV channels they or their relatives watch, the majority will answer — Russia-1 and Channel One. These two channels take, respectively, the first and the second positions in the broadcast network by number views. Each provides a wide range of programs, starting with news and political programs and ending with entertainment, music and TV shows. Since the 2010s, an increasing part of these channels’ airtime has been occupied by political talk shows and programs. After the annexation of the Crimean peninsula to Russia in 2014 and the escalation of the conflict with Ukraine, the number of such shows dramatically increased. Now, the day broadcast program of Channel One comprises of almost 7 hours of programs related to politics and news reports.
Channel One belongs to the media holding National Media Group, but most of the shares are controlled by state-owned companies (Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo) holds 38,9%). The same pertains to the channel Russia-1, which is the flagship channel of the media holding VGTRK, also owned by the state. The audience of these channels’ political programs is attracted by the familiar formats and the famous presenters, recognised by general audiences as professionals in their field. The information is simple to acquire and does not require critical thinking: all opinions here are spelled out, unambiguous. More precisely, THE OPINION.
I did not watch it, therefore it does not exist
One of the stop-list frequenters and “persona non grata” is the Russian oppositionist Alexey Navalny. Any mention of his activities or even his name almost never appear on the broadcast of the federal TV channels. In February 2012, a part of the live broadcast on the dispute between Tina Kandelaki and Vladimir Pozner about the admission of Alexey Navalny to television was cut out from the talk show “Pozner.” (The small segment was shown in the eastern part of the country, but by the time it made its way to the European broadcast, it had been removed — this happens quite frequently thanks to the huge time difference between the eastern and western parts of the country). Later, at a press conference about the incident, Pozner confirmed that censoring did take place. According to him, there is always a person in the studio who reports information to the general director, who then excludes undesirable parts from the aired program.
In July 2013, creative producer of Russia-1 (officially deputy editor-in-chief of Russia-24 TV channel) Alexander Orlov claimed that he was fired for his “perky” posts about Alexey Navalny on his social networks. In an interview on the Echo of Moscow radio station, he said that he was trying to protect Alexey’s wife, Julia, from unflattering attacks of a certain official. The journalist added that even after his dismissal, he continues to be threatened with criminal cases for his Facebook posts.
Last year’s spring anti-corruption rallies also passed almost unnoticed by the audiences of federal channels. Though many municipal governments denied the Navalny headquarters permission to hold the rallies, they took place throughout the country. On the day of the rally, April 27, no events related to these actions were covered on the federal channels. In contrast, a large number of films and entertainment programs were broadcast.
Historical figures and scenes from films and TV shows that apparently pose a threat to the state are similarly excluded from the broadcast. In December 2016, TV presenter Konstantin Semin reported on such ideologically-motivated edits to film. Channel 5 (like Channel One, a part of National Media Group) excluded some episodes of the film Liberation — in particular, episodes showing Stalin in a positive light.
Another taboo subject is Chechen–Russian conflict. In 2011, a comprehensive report on abductions and torture of people in Chechnya was removed from the NTV air. On October 30, the story was shown to the Far East and Siberia, but did not go to the European broadcast. The material prepared by NTV says that the Investigation Committee is unable to handle cases of kidnappings in Chechnya effectively due to the interference of local security forces.
In emergency or tense political situations, the state often uses media outlets to maintain calm in society and to suppress disagreeable facts. One of the loudest and most terrifying cases of this occurred in August 2000, when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank during exercises due to two explosions on board. For a whole day, people watched the events unfold in real-time news. All 118 crew members died. Sergei Dorenko, a host of the author’s program, expressed his point of view on this issue in one of the episodes and made out in detail why almost everything said on federal TV channels was fake news. He called Vladimir Putin (then in his first year of presidency) “the main culprit for the catastrophe,” among a slew of other unflattering characteristics. For example, Dorenko stated that Putin did not believe the widows of officers who died on the submarine, implying they were bribed in order to discredit him. This episode of the program turned out to be the last. By the decision of the ORT administration (the former Channel One) on September 4, 2000 the program was closed. Dorenko was fired from ORT with a scandal.
The list of prohibited topics and examples grows larger every year, but thinking there cannot be anything more restrictive becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Show must not go on
The Insider published an article entitled “Confessions of a propagandist in 2017. Part II. How political talk shows are made on federal TV.” In essence, this interview with direct creators and participants revealed the internal workings of federally-sanctioned television shows. Initially, these weekly programs really were a platform for discussions on various political and economic topics. More and more, they turned into displays of uncontrollable quarrels and verbal abuse on the basis of nationalism, and began to be broadcast several times a day.
The shows are meaningless and merciless, the essence of questions and answers almost always gets lost among endless squabbles with invited foreign “experts” (about most of which there is no information on the Internet), the absolutely subjective presenters. The likelihood of a constructive dialogue is extremely rare, but, moreover, it is not needed. The function of such shows is not at all educational, but pathetic, in the Aristotelian sense, made up of emotions, shouts and heated discussions.
Such shows appeared thanks to the need to deliver and anchor THE OPINION, ideally with each meal of the day. Watching such shows, the audience should not have doubts or questions. And, based on this logic, everything should play into the hand of experts representing the pro-government point of view: the audience in studio applauding after every word and insult to the opposite side; the very titles of the segments (“Pain and intimidation from the State Department [of the USA]”, “Ukraine sends [its] sailors to slaughter”, “Russia can turn the United States into radioactive ash” to name only a few); the behavior of the hosts, who, during the debates, only plug and insult the opposite side.
Dmitry Kiselev, host of the program “Vesti Nedeli” (Weekly News) on Russia-1 can rightly be called one of the most furious fighters of the propaganda front. His news leads and reflections on various political topics have already gone down in history and turned into memes. On air, he reads indecent verses about the Turkish president, Recep Erdoğan, written by Boris Johnson; states that Russia is the only country capable of turning the United States into radioactive ashes (the title above belongs to him) and strongly supports the propaganda of Ukrainophobia, presenting all incredible fakes as evidence, (he has, on occasion, apologized for some). In 2014, Kiselev was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland of the 4th degree for his career successes, strengthening the rule of law, protecting the rights and interests of citizens, and many years of diligent work. Meanwhile, The Economist awarded him the title of “Main Propagandist of Russia.”
Artem Sheinin, a presenter of two political programs on Channel One and a member of the Academy of Russian Television is another propaganda distributor. And on the video below, almost at the very end, he will offer the Ukrainian blogger, who (according to his social network account and Sheinin) losе his own argument, a white bucket with the inscription “SH*T”.
In this video, Artem Sheinin was unable to cope with emotions and attacked the guest of the program, American journalist (according to The Insider — just a former insurance agent who moved to Russia from the USA) Michael Bohm. The fight was quickly prevented, and the participants discussed “whether the show turned out well.”
If you felt sorry for foreign “experts,” then do not worry. They have no time to pity themselves and each other — too busy at work. Komsomolskaya Pravda, with reference to an informed source, reported about fees of regular guests of political shows. According to the source, contracts are usually secured with the most active foreign “experts,” and their income can comprise a hundred thousand or even a million rubles per month ($7,500–15,000). Their presence is beneficial for the show since the whole scenario is built on conflict with them.
In 2016, another host of a popular political program on Russia-1, Yevgeny Popov, released the investigation film “The Browder Effect”. The announcement stated that “the basis for the sensational journalistic investigation was the correspondence between Alexey Navalny and William Browder, as well as the intelligence reports of the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Service of Great Britain.” However, rather than impressing the journalistic community, the film was scrutinised heavily for the evidence it presented.
One of the most thorough analyses was provided by The Insider. The article contains a range of evidence showing that the documents and reports are fake and made specifically for the film.
On the first picture, The Insider highlights the phrase “All of Magnitsky’s current government controlled media have taken an active defensive position backed by Russian law enforcement agencies”, also noting a number of grammatical and stylistic errors on the page.
In this document, a native English speaker misspelt “developing” and “developed” countries. And the phrase “All of the above actions are held under the common code name “THE QUAKE” was transformed in “Within held events under the general code name “THE QUAKE”.
And finally, one of the most common field for mistakes among Russian speakers in the English language — articles. Somehow, a CIA spy, in the report to the Director, managed to put the article in front of a proper noun.
In addition, The Insider reported that all the speakers presented in the film were accused of fraud; that the voices of Alexey Navalny and the deputy Ilya Ponomarev in the alleged Skype conversation do not coincide with their voices on the recording when the filmmakers try to take their comments on that conversation; that CIA spies, for some reason, store their documents on Ukrainian servers.
Fake news covers the same taboo topics as censorship and propaganda. For example, one of the most discussed fakes of the end of 2017 was the Russian Ministry of Defense post on Facebook and Twitter (the posts are no longer available). The photos added to this post allegedly confirmed that the US military has covered the Islamic State militants. However, it turned out that one of the photos is an exact match for the screenshot from the game AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron, and other pictures are screenshots from the video of the Iraqi Air Force actions near Fallujah in 2016.
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict remains one of the hottest topics. Amid worsening relations and information war, the number of fake news grows every day. There is even a website exposing the fakes among the news about Ukraine. Fake or unverified news is published on Stopfake.org website, and then a reasoned refutation is given. On December 7, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that Ukraine “became the leader among the neighboring countries in terms of drug traffic” and also that “the [drug] traffic goes both to Europe and to the Russian Federation through [Ukrainian] ports at the western border”. This news was spread by the Russian state media. However, Stopfake.org checked the data and reported that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in its 2018 analysis gave different information:
The above-mentioned The Insider devoted a whole section on his website to exposing fakes. One of the articles is connected with the recent conflict of the Russian and Ukrainian Navy in the Kerch Strait. Shortly following the incident, Channel One and Russia-1 reported that Ukraine had lost a third part of its fleet. However, The Insider noted that according to the BBC, now the Surface Forces of the Ukrainian Navy includes two brigades of surface ships, two divisions of guard and support ships and a division of search and rescue vessels. The combat structure of the Ukrainian Navy includes 16 warships. Presumably, the Russian media took information only about the ships of one new project, which is currently being implemented, and not about the entire fleet of Ukraine.
Fortunately, not all journalists agree to juggle facts for the sake of propaganda and still remember the real purpose of journalism. Leonid Parfenov, like the before mentioned Sergey Dorenko, paid for the truth and unwillingness to submit to pro-government censorship with his career on TV.
His program “Namedni” (“Recently”) began to go on “urgent leave” often since 2003. This was almost always preceded by covering some topic inconvenient for the authorities. Such parts were cut from the air, but Parfyonov always informed the audience about it. The last straw was the situation in May 2004. Parfyonov planned to put in his program an interview with the widow of an influential Chechen separatist. However, editor-in-chief of NTV Alexander Gerasimov issued an order banning the broadcast of this story on European air (the story was already shown in the eastern part of the country). He argued this with the request of the special services seeking to prevent an escalation of the conflict. Parfyonov published the text of the order in the Kommersant newspaper, and added the full text of the interview. The channel administration considered Parfyonov’s actions a violation of corporate ethics, and on May 31, 2004, “Namedni” was closed and Parfyonov himself was fired. The decision didn’t come as a shock to Parfyonov, who had considered leaving TV journalism since 2001.
Since then, Parfyonov has been very successfully self-employed. He writes books, makes documentary films, which the First Channel buys then and expresses his political opinion at rallies and on his YouTube channel. He appears on federal TV only to take part in entertainment programs as a moderator or judge, or to receive an award.
This video captures Leonid Parfyonov’s speech at the ceremony of the Vladislav Listyev Award, which is presented in the field of television journalism. In his speech, he expressed his concerns about the profession of a journalist, about the situation with free journalism in Russia in general. This record was made in 2010:
“Supreme authority seems to be the dearest dead man: about it [according to the Russian tradition][one can say] only good or nothing” — Leonid Parfyonov
